Monthly Archives: December 2005

Okay, so you see this chart of album sales? So where's all the money that mp3s and fille sharing have taken from the record industry? Surely, 1996, before the explosion of the Internet and file sharing, should be higher than…

Keith Milford's Motel Hell is a blog that collects postcards of American motels and reststops. If you loved Phaidon's Boring Postcards books (and who doesn't?) you'll love the damp, moldy smell of this site.

"I've got 34 Scandals but a bitch ain't one! Hit me! Oh, and by the way, you're doin' a heckuva job, Brownie. And Rummy. And Cheney. Also, over at Daily Kos, they are trying to figure out Chimpy's Top 10…

You may have noticed a few additions to the blog these days. One is the funky list of what I supposedly have at home from Netflix (left hand column). However, it's experiencing some difficulty and telling you some of what…

Do those ads offering free MacMinis/iPods/iBooks really work? Is it all just a big scam? Well, yes and no. Hardy Menagh from LowEndMac.com dives in and tries to surface with a free mini.Yes, You Can Get a 'Free' Mac mini…

Dir. Morris Barry
1966
Tomb of the Cybermen is exactly the kind of DVD to pull out when you still have a cold a week later, and can’t be arsed to do anything else.
One of the few surviving Patrick Troughton-era Doctor Who serials (most of which were thrown out by the BBC to make room on their tape shelves) and one of two available on DVD, this was thought lost until discovered in a Hong Kong basement in 1992. Proclaimed a “classic” by now-grown-up impressionable children who hadn’t seen it since, this four-part story fortunately is a cute dose of early Who.

On Saturday, December 3, my bleedin' PowerShot A70 broke. Though I could still view old images, the viewfinder in camera mode showed a blur of black and violet. Balls! This will be a regularly updated entry to see how long…

Unlikable: Two Road MoviesSideways
Dir. Alexander Payne
2004
Five Easy Pieces
Dir. Bob Rafaelson
1970This week, while suffering from post-movie-premiere exhaustion, I finally got back to watching films. I have a stack of DVDs waiting and I’m set to tackle them.
And maybe subconsciously, I chose two men-on-the-road movies, “Sideways” and “Five Easy Pieces.” Twenty-four years separate these films, but there are many similarities, and I’ll comment on a few here.
Briefly, Sideways, for those who haven’t seen it, concerns two mid-life crises men on a week-long road trip to Santa Barbara’s wine country. The two–Paul Giamatti and Michael Haden Church–were roommates in college, and now Church’s Jack is about to marry–into money, we see, which would solve at least temporarily his failing acting career. Giamatti’s is an alcoholic wine connoisseur, a failed writer, with a failed marriage, and the inability to move forward. Over the week they both meet a woman each, and slowly Giamatti’s Miles grows up a little.
Five Easy Pieces stars Jack Nicholson as Robert, who we first meet working on an oil field in Wasco, CA. We might mistake Wasco for Waco, Texas, for all the oil and dust, but then again, we might mistake Nicholson’s Robert as just another minimum wage cracker until it’s revealed he’s the lone wolf son of a musical patriarchy. And when that patriarch has two strokes and is near death, Robert is called back up to the family’s retreat off the coast of Washington state.
Both Robert and Miles are in existential crisis, lost, unsure who they are, who they could be, and if anything lies ahead. So they take to the road, Robert on a trip towards the father, and Miles towards (metaphorically) the wife, as if to discover what went wrong.

Battling numerous ailments and wheelchair-bound, playwright Harold Pinter still delivered a barnstorming critique of American Imperialism. Art, truth and politics I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful…